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ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 



ELEMENTS 
OF SPIRITUALITY 

OR 

THE SPIRITUAL MAN 



BY 

REV. GEORGE HOOPER FERRIS, D. D. 

li 

Pastor First Baptist Church in Philadelphia 

Author: "The Formation of the New Testament" 



PHILADELPHIA 

THE GRIFFITH & ROWLAND PRESS 

MCMXII 






w 



Copyright 1912 by 
A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary 



Published December, 1912 



©CI.A330458 



PREFACE 

This little book is a plea for a unified life. It 
endeavors to analyze, to be sure, but only that 
some conception of the wholeness of the spiritual 
life may be seen back of its multiplicity of ex- 
periences. The sermons were preached to that 
caravan of hearers which passes, on successive 
Sunday mornings, before the vision of a preacher 
in a great city. To teach a comprehensive doctrine 
under such circumstances is not easy. The demand 
is for some suggestive allusion, some illuminating 
phrase, some interpreting principle, that can be 
caught by the hearer as he passes. Elaborately 
reasoned truth does not flourish under such condi- 
tions. In submitting the sermons to print the author 
calls attention to these conditions, hoping they will 
induce the reader to judge the sermons in the light 
of their first intent and production. The fate that 
now befalls them was not the incentive of their 
preparation. 

Geo. H. Ferris. 

Philadelphia, September 12, 1912. 



CONTENTS 

The Affectional Element of Spirituality, g 

II 
The Devotional Element of Spirituality.. 23 

III 
The Intellectual Element of Spirituality 37 

IV 
The Moral Element of Spirituality 51 

V 
A Complete Spirituality 65 



THE AFFECTIONAL ELEMENT OF 
SPIRITUALITY 



" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart/' 
— Mark 12:30. 

" Beloved, let us love one another : for love is of God ; 
and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth 
God/' — 1 John 4 : 7. 



"Men are trying to be Christians by specialties. They 
try to build up a moral and spiritual character by watching 
against separate temptations here and there. But the 
truth is that a man whose soul is educated in the atmos- 
phere of divine love has that within him which minis- 
ters to all these qualities all the time; and the soul is full, 
and is constantly overflowing them automatically. It is 
summer in a man, and everything is growing there, when 
once you raise this element into ascendency in him. Fur- 
nace heat will be no longer needed when the solar blaze, 
this wonderful principle which germinates and regulates 
everything, gains control. Without it, everything is force 
work; with it, everything is spontaneous. Without it, 
everything is clashing and irregular; with it, everything 
is harmonious and perfectly orderly. Without it, every- 
thing is special and partial; with it, everything is sys- 
tematic and universal all through life. ,, 

— H. W. Beecher, Sermon, " Summer in the Soul" 



IN the early years of my ministry I tried to find 
a substitute for the word " spiritual." Words, 
like coins, lose their image and superscription in 
the fingering process of human interchange. My 
reason for trying to avoid the word spiritual was 
because I believed it had come to stand for a 
narrow, attenuated, unlovely condition of charac- 
ter. I did not believe the average healthy, high- 
minded man of the street experienced a pleasing 
sensation when told that some one was " a spiritual 
man." I am still inclined to that opinion. Let me 
tell you the sort of picture that I believe is generally 
painted by that adjective. It is of a man who lays 
but little emphasis upon those genial and generous 
qualities of character that do so much to remove 
the friction and lubricate the points of contact in 
this great grinding social machine. It is of a man 
who does little to cultivate that openness of mind 
that has done so much to make our age glorious 
with invention and discovery. A spiritual man is 
one who takes great pride in the fact that his 
salvation is due to no merit of his own; who 
assumes that he is safely within the ark himself, 
and so needs no religious exercise save that of 

ii 



12 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

throwing ropes to the unfortunates outside; who ac- 
cepts with unquestioning and serene credulity every 
traditional doctrine of the church, and is properly 
shocked at the mental attitude that would add or 
take away. 

And yet we cannot avoid using the word spir- 
itual. It is a noble, a beautiful, an inspiring word. 
The only thing left is to try to broaden its signifi- 
cance. This is the object of this series of sermons. 
We must use the word, but it is only fair to warn 
you that it contains every element suggested by the 
general text chosen for our series. The spiritual 
life is four-sided. It has a window that looks out 
through the affectional life; another that looks 
out through the devotional life; a third that looks 
out through the intellectual life; and a fourth that 
looks out through the moral life. It is related 
to love ; it is related to prayer ; it is related to truth ; 
and it is related to righteousness. " Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy 
strength. " 

To one acquainted with Christianity as Christ 
taught it, it would seem almost superfluous, after 
two thousand years, to urge a company of his fol- 
lowers to be kind and gentle and considerate and 
sympathetic. Surely, they who have been told so 
persistently by their Master to let their good deeds 
" shine before men " ; to " do good, hoping for 
nothing again " ; to forgive " until seventy times 



AFFECTION AL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 1 3 

seven " ; to go two miles if compelled to go one ; 
to give good measure, " pressed down, and shaken 
together, and running over " ; to keep away from 
worship, if they have " aught against a brother " ; 
to be like the sun, that " shines on the evil and the 
good"; and so to live, in every way, that they 
are " the light of the world " — surely they will need 
no exhortation to manifest the common virtues of 
beneficence and brotherhood. This would be the 
conclusion one would draw from the teaching of 
Jesus. 

If we turn from this teaching to historical Chris- 
tianity, what a shock we receive! We read of 
Donatists refusing to worship in the orthodox 
churches they have seized, until they have burnt 
the altar and scraped the wood and beat multitudes 
to death with clubs and blinded others by anointing 
their eyes with lime. We read of the holy and 
orthodox followers of Saint Cyril of Alexandria 
filling the city with riot and bloodshed, wounding 
the prefect Orestes, and dragging the pure-minded 
and talented Hypatia into one of their churches in 
order to murder her and tear her flesh from her 
bones with sharp shells. We read of three thou- 
sand persons perishing in a mad riot that convulsed 
Constantinople when Macedonius, who believed that 
Christ was of " like substance " with the Father, 
superseded Paul, who believed that he was of the 
" same substance " with the Father. We read of 
plunders and atrocities that are almost unimaginable, 



14 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

being committed over the question of the proper 
time for the celebration of Easter, of the exact 
nature of the light at the Transfiguration, of the 
fate of the bread on the altar after a formula has 
been uttered over it. From such a story we turn 
away to cry with Longfellow: 

And most of all thank God for this ! 
The war and waste of clashing creeds 
Now ends in words, and not in deeds; 
And no one suffers loss or bleeds 
For thoughts that men call heresies. 

We have made some progress to be sure. We 
have advanced a little over the time when Charles 
IX honestly thought he was doing God's will by 
piously attending mass for three hours in the morn- 
ing, and in the evening, without a throb of the 
heart, deluging the streets of the city with blood. 
And yet how far we are still from carrying our 
religion into the real problems and needs of life! 
When we think of the lonely lives that are losing 
their courage, of the tempted and forgotten, of 
the outcast and neglected, of the seriousness of our 
industrial situation, of the millions in lands of 
darkness over the seas; and then, when we turn 
from these things to the bickerings in hundreds of 
little churches, to the self-seeking that hides behind 
altars and pulpits and official positions, to our hun- 
dred and fifty denominations with their almost in- 
comprehensible differences, it seems as if we were 



AFFECTION AL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 1 5 

still as much in need of a right emphasis as was 
Charles IX. " If any man have not the spirit of 
Christ, he is none of his." " Beloved, let us love one 
another; for love is of God." 

How can we mistake the spirit of Christianity? 
" That ye love one another, as I have loved you." 
We have societies whose agents parole the streets 
in the interests of dumb animals. If an officer of 
one of these societies finds a horse whose collar 
does not fit, or whose shoulder has become raw 
with chafing; if he discovers a stray dog who has 
been cast by circumstances on the world, to be 
stoned and kicked and driven into alleys, he makes 
the cause of the brute, his own, and seeks to 
ameliorate the evil and heal the wounds. This is 
excellent. But some of us are asking why this same 
thing is not done in the higher realm of human 
relationships. The invention of new forms of 
machinery flings men on the world, to be beaten 
about by circumstances. There are people whom 
misery has made suspicious; people who have been 
driven into out-of-the-way corners by the flings of 
misfortune; people whose delicate sensibilities have 
been chafed by rough experiences. I do not mean 
the well-fed beggars you see on the street. They 
do not mind if you fling them a coin in the same 
spirit in which you fling a bone to a dog. I mean 
the people who are hungry, without saying a word 
about it; who are wretched, and still plod bravely 
on; who are crushed, and yet hold up their heads 



1 6 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

as nobly as the victors in life's struggle. They do 
not care for your money, but they would like a 
little of your heart. They come into this church. 
They sit at your side in the pew. Sometimes, as I 
look down from the pulpit on a great congregation, 
the tragedy of it all strikes me. Here we are, 
assembled in this place, all from the great jostling 
world without, all journeying on into the mysteri- 
ous unknown, fighting with the same difficulties, 
looking forward to the same hope, singing the 
praises of the same Christ, all children of God, 
blood relatives, of the same family, and what are 
we doing to help one another? what are we doing 
for our wayward dear ones in the great world with- 
out? 

A boy goes out into the world. His mother takes 
him aside for a few last words of solemn injunc- 
tion and loving advice. She tells him to beware of 
the " good fellow/' for, despite his genial and com- 
panionable exterior, he is an advance agent of the 
devil. Generally the boy looks back and bears wit- 
ness to the fact that his mother's words are true. 
But what a terrible confession that is! It simply 
says that the forces of evil make themselves more 
attractive than the forces of good. It says that 
religious people have not yet learned the most effect- 
ive of all God's agencies, the finest of all fine arts — 
the art of being agreeable and generous and sponta- 
neous and kind in order to win the world to right- 
eousness and truth. 



AFFECTIONAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 1 7 

I have heard of men being put out of a church 
because they did not believe that the book of Job 
was history, or that Second Timothy was an epistle 
by Paul. I have heard of a State Convention with- 
drawing the hand of fellowship from a man because 
he could not analyze the consciousness of the In- 
finite and give the exact psychological relation of 
the divinity of Christ to the spirit of God in man. 
But never did I hear of a man being refused the 
communion because he was rancorous and cynical. 
Imagine a solemn ecclesiastical council pronouncing 
anathema upon a man because it has carefully in- 
vestigated his character and has found that he does 
not possess that Christian radiance and glory " that 
giveth light unto all that are in the house." By 
all the norms of the teaching of Jesus a Christian 
ought to act upon this world much as a gleam of 
March sunshine acts upon the rigid fields and chill 
atmosphere of early spring, drawing out the frost 
and mellowing things up for the harvest. And yet, 
as we have organized it and preached it and lived 
it for two thousand years, it has been possible for 
a man to be suspicious and gloomy and disagree- 
able and unsympathetic and yet live on in the church 
without the least suspicion or charge of heresy. 
When the time comes that ordinary acts of helpful- 
ness, simple services of friendship, the kind greet- 
ing, the hopeful word, the suppressed slander, the 
cheerful spirit, the generous mind are looked upon 
as indications of spirituality, showing that a man 

B 



i8 



ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 



has been " born again," we shall be far on our way 
to a higher and truer conception of Christianity. 

Wie must broaden our ideal of spirituality. 
Humanitarianism and benevolence do not cover the 
whole area of the activity of the Spirit, but they 
are certainly important forms of its manifestation. 
I picked up a well-known hymn-book not long ago, 
and as I was looking over the index my eye chanced 
to fall upon the word " love." Out of curiosity I 
counted the number of hymns under each sub- 
division of that general topic. There were twenty- 
two hymns on " love for Christ," five on " love for 
God," four on " love for the saints," and two on 
" love for the church." But on love for man, just 
because he is man, because he is our brother, 
because he is our fellow traveler in this great human 
caravan, there was not a single hymn. I know 
of nothing that better illustrates the kind of spir- 
ituality against which I am trying to warn you than 
does this hymn-book. All men manifest a certain 
amount of friendliness and affection, particularly to- 
ward some little coterie of congenial and resembling 
spirits. There is always an interchange of social 
amenities between those who belong to "our set," 
" our circle," or " our crowd." Down in the back 
streets you will find the strongest kind of loyalty 
to "our gang." The old saying that there is 
" honor among thieves " does not mean anything 
more than the fact that among the " guns," as they 
are called, there is a certain low and crass esprit 



AFFECTION AL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 1 9 

de corps. " If ye salute your brethren only, what 
reward have ye ?• " The very criminals do that. 

A friend of mine once attempted to criticise the 
church on the ground that it was more profitable 
to belong to a fraternal society. He said : " I was 
in a hospital in Cuba during the Spanish war. A 
man came in and asked if there were any Masons 
there, and the Masons were taken out and removed 
to a better place. A second man came in and 
asked if there were any Odd Fellows there, and the 
Odd Fellows were taken away to a better place. I 
could only say that I was a Christian, and so had 
to remain where I was." To that I answered: 
" You are right. The difference between Chris- 
tianity and these other organizations is right there. 
If a Christian entered that place he would say: 
' Each man here is a child of God, and therefore, 
my brother, and so I must do what I can to make 
the whole hospital better and cleaner.' " No boun- 
daries, no high walls, no limiting circumstances, no 
barriers of caste or birth can separate one who has 
felt the power of the love of Christ from those 
" for whom Christ died." 

So, in one sense, the church is a great school for 
the affections. I know a college professor who 
will not send his children to Sunday-school. He 
says myths are taught there as if they were history. 
He says the instruction is poor. Far be it from 
me to say that there are no serious defects in our 
present methods of Sunday-school teaching. I 



20 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

recognize the need of radical changes. But I recog- 
nize another thing. The man who denies his chil- 
dren that education of the heart which can only- 
come through sympathetic contact with other lives 
in some organization that is devoted to religious 
aims and efforts, is making them far more igno- 
rant and narrow than they could possibly become by 
being taught the reality of all the ghost stories in 
the world. It is a great thing to be well instructed 
in facts. A historical spirit, a mind well stored 
with past happenings, a strict loyalty to the order 
of events, a desire to discover the reality under- 
lying all ancient records, are all important things. 
But there is something else, without which these 
things are " sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. " 
What shall we say of a father who would blush 
a deep crimson if his children were to speak of 
Jonah as a historical character or were to believe in 
the existence of the devil, though he is willing to 
allow them to grow up in almost as dense ignorance 
of the art of loving as if they were Comanches? 
He whose heart is uneducated, who does not know 
how to love, is in as serious darkness, is as much 
of a barbarian as if he had to sign himself "John 
Smith — his mark." Restricted affections are the 
essence of narrowness. Saint Paul and Robert 
Browning and Henry Ward Beecher and Henry 
Drummond and a great many others have assured 
us again and again that love is " the greatest 
thing in the world." If that is true, no task is 



AFFECTION AL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 21 

more important than that of teaching people how 
to love. 

One hot and sultry day in summer, while passing 
through the heart of a great city, I stopped to rest 
for a few moments in a little park. It was just a 
few square feet of green, in the midst of a wilder-; 
ness of flagstones and gutters and Belgian blocks. 
Yet what a story it could tell ! A fountain bubbled 
up in the center of it and benches were placed in 
the shade of the over-arching trees. Old men with 
crutches beside them; tired women with huge 
bundles; nurse-girls with their little carriages; 
ragged creatures, the driftwood of the city's popu- 
lation; beggars, with the lines of degeneracy cut 
deeply in their faces — all stopped here for a few 
moments and then passed on. The panting dog 
quenched his thirst from the drippings of the foun- 
tain. Busy men, as they hurried past, turned aside 
to moisten the parched lips from the little tin cups. 
All day long the park stood there, giving rest and 
shade and refreshment to the worn and wearied 
throng as it hurried through the thoroughfares of 
the great human desert. So is the spiritual man. 
He is " the shadow of a rock in a weary land." To 
him the broken-hearted come and depart with re- 
newed hope and courage. Within the shadow of 
his sympathy the crushed and defeated prepare 
for another struggle with hard and unequal cir- 
cumstances. At the fountain of his faith all the 
doubters drink, and lives that an hour before were 



22 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

faint and ready to fall go forth from his presence 
strong and brave and erect for the battle of life. 
This is spirituality. " Beloved, let us love one 
another: for love is of God; and every one that 
loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." 



II 



THE DEVOTIONAL ELEMENT OF 
SPIRITUALITY 



" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul." — 
Mark 12:30. 

" When I thought to know this, it was too painful for 
me, until I went into the sanctuary of God." — Psalm 73: 
16, 17. 



"Ask the saintliest men and women of this world 
whether their holy watch was continuous, and their faith 
and their love as reliable as their thought; and they 
will tell you how long, even when they went up to be 
with the Saviour on the mount, have been the slumbers 
of unconsciousness, compared with the priceless instants 
when they were awake and beheld his glory. In every 
earnest life there are weary flats to tread with the 
heavens out of sight — no sun, no moon — and not a tint 
of light upon the path below; when the only guidance is 
the faith of brighter hours, and the secret Hand we are 
too numb and dark to feel. But to the meek and faithful 
it is not always so. Now and then, something touches the 
dull dream of sense and custom, and the desolation 
vanishes away: the spirit leaves its witness with us; the 
divine realities come up from the past and straightway 
enter the present; the ear into which we poured our 
prayer is not deaf; the infinite eye to which we turned 
is not blind, but looks in with answering mercy on us." 

— James Martineau, Sermon, " The Tides of the Spirit." 



II 



THE tourist passing through the hot and dusty 
streets of an Oriental city sometimes sees 
a man drop the shoes from his feet and fall pros- 
trate on the ground, lying there while the great 
crowd surges past him in as utter abstraction and 
isolation as if he were in some far-off cave on 
the side of a mountain or on some lonely island in 
the midst of the sea. It is a strange sight to our 
Occidental eye. Imagine a broker down on Fourth 
Street dropping on his knees for prayer by the 
curbstone. What a curious crowd he would have 
around him in an instant. A few years ago, at the 
installation of a new pastor in the Church of the 
Divine Paternity in New York, one of the speakers 
said: " Our religion is just good citizenship, with 
strong, clean life. That is all there is in it. It is 
all there is in any religion." If you will take that 
poor Oriental, lying prostrate on his face in the 
dusty street, and will compare him with the strong, 
manly, broad-minded preacher of righteousness de- 
claring to his New York audience that religion is 
nothing but a " clean life," you will have the two 
conceptions, or attitudes, of soul that I wish to 
present in contrast this morning. It is a very 

25 



26 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

suggestive thought of Mr. Lecky, in his " History of 
European Morals," that in the progress of the race 
there is no such thing as " unmixed improvement." 
" We may gain more than we lose/' he says, " but 
we always lose something. There are virtues that 
are continually dying away with advancing civiliza- 
tion, and even the lowest stage possesses its dis- 
tinctive excellence." 

I submit a question to you. Have we not dropped 
something in our hurrying pursuit of religious light 
and liberty — something that we shall have to go 
back and pick up again, by and by? We may 
congratulate ourselves that we have broken loose 
from the superstition of the crucifix, the candle, the 
altar-bell, the tinseled image, and the elevated host. 
But was there not something behind those blind 
gropings of the human soul? The traveler who 
returns from Europe, after spending a large por- 
tion of his time passing in and out of the doors of 
cool, silent, dim cathedrals and growing accustomed 
to the sight of peasants who have left their work, 
and children who have abandoned their play, and 
fine ladies who have turned their backs on homes 
of luxury, all to kneel side by side in the little 
chapel, is quite likely to feel a shock of surprise 
when he leaves the steamer and traverses the streets 
of New York to see the churches standing beside 
the way with tightly closed doors, and huge iron 
gates to keep the poor and the children from soil- 
ing the stone steps, and a general atmosphere about 



DEVOTIONAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 2J 

the place that seems to say, " God will be back 
again next Sunday." He says to himself, " Our 
Protestantism has lost something." Then, just as 
the feeling of regret is at its height, there flashes 
across his mind the picture of that cab-driver in 
Rome, who robbed him of a good portion of his 
letter of credit and whom he saw a few hours later 
quietly saying his prayers in Santa Maria Maggiore. 
H Yes," he says, " our Protestantism has lost some- 
thing — and gained something. It has lessened the 
number of men who try to be religious without 
being moral, but it has increased the number of 
men who try to be moral without being religious." 
Either one is an unfortunate, a wicked, an im- 
possible separation. Just as surely as the eccle- 
siastical organization that does not make men more 
honest, clean, truthful, just, pure, and upright in- 
vites upon itself the ruin wrought by the earth- 
quake shock of an awakened conscience; so the 
nation, or the age, that seeks to maintain a high 
standard of moral integrity, or an earnest spirit of 
sympathetic charity, without prayer, will find that 
its justice and brotherhood dry up in the dust of 
doubt and unbelief. This is as sure as that the 
golden grain and luxuriant foliage would depart 
from the banks of the Nile if ever the floods ceased 
to come down from the mountains of Abyssinia 
and the reservoirs of Nyanza. Alas for the life 
that loses its hills ! " If a man say, I love God, and 
hateth his brother, he is a liar." 



28 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

Here is the danger of our day. It is the danger 
of men who never spread their petty plans, their 
shrunken standards, their miserable ideals, their 
low-lying ambitions before the all-seeing eye of the 
omniscient God. It is the danger of men who never 
feel the longing expressed in the cry, " Lead me to 
the rock that is higher than I." They go through 
the world as if there were nothing higher than 
themselves. They plod along over a dreary level 
of self-seeking, with no mount of vision, or hill 
of aspiration, to break the monotony of an animal 
satisfaction. This is what removes all devotion 
from their lives. No man can kneel before an 
altar that is inscribed with his own name. No man 
can really venerate the material objects of existence 
without degrading himself to their impersonal level. 
He who would rise to the true height of manhood 
must find in the lustrous air some rock of faith, 
higher than self, where he can mingle with the 
meaning of things and open his soul to the stream- 
ing thoughts of God. 

Take prayer out of the life of Christ, and how 
can you account for the majesty of his faith? 
Take away the hours spent under the stars in the 
desert or on the mountainside; strike out the sup- 
plication for his followers at the Last Supper or the 
leaning on the Father's will in the gloom of Geth- 
semane; drop from the story of the cross the 
despairing outburst of doubt and the noble petition 
for the forgiveness of his tormentors — and how the 



DEVOTIONAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 29 

charm departs from the story and the gospel sinks 
to the level of a mere drama. It is no longer the 
titanic struggle of a soul that we are witnessing, 
but a clever bit of acting on the part of One who 
had no mighty problems of his own to take to God., 
but who just pretended to "bear our griefs and 
carry our sorrows." You can no more have religion 
without prayer than you can have flowers without 
rain, or music without atmosphere. It is the hour 
of devotion that gives us our first glimpse of those 

Great truths that pitch their shining tents 
Outside our walls; and though but dimly seen 
In the gray dawn, they will be manifest 
When the light widens to the perfect day. 

What light this throws on the matter of spirit- 
uality. Before we pronounce a man a spiritual man 
we must know where he finds the power that holds 
him in paths of rectitude when there is presented 
to him some temptation to an immoral or a sen- 
sual or a dishonest act. Does he do the right in 
order to maintain a good name? Does he shrink 
from the thought of being condemned, scorned, 
shunned by society? Does he think of the misera- 
ble, broken, disabled body, ruined by low indul- 
gence, that will be the result of the transgression of 
nature's laws ? Does he draw back because he fears 
his business will be injured and the long labors of 
years of industry will be lost? No doubt such 
motives do hold men. We cannot question the fact 



30 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

that men are often kept from falling into wrong 
by fear of disgrace, or fear of disease, or fear of 
bankruptcy. But suppose there comes a time when 
such a man is called upon to choose deliberately 
the unpopular thing, for no other reason than be- 
cause it is right and just; suppose he stands, as 
countless thousands of the heroes of faith have 
stood, between the allurements of physical comfort 
and the sacred summons of God; suppose he dis- 
covers some day that trickery in business is profit- 
able, and that failure stares him in the face unless 
he does the dishonest thing. What will hold him 
then? Where will he find the higher norm of 
action if he never turns to God in prayer. ' 

Foolish is the traveler who quenches his thirst 
from every roadside stream. Fever and death lurk 
in the foul water that creeps over the surface of 
the earth, gathering refuse and drainage all along 
the way. Only the pure and glistening stream that 
bubbles up from the great rock reservoir in 
the bosom of the hills can be trusted. But there 
is another man who is even more foolish. It is 
the man who takes his ideals, his ambitions, his 
standards, his measurements of life, his boundaries 
of hope, his expectations, and his dreams from the 
streams of earth-born philosophy, from the common 
conceptions and purposes that are ever being defiled 
and muddied by self-interest and greed. God pity 
that man! He is seeking to satisfy his soul-long- 
ings from a fever-haunted ditch. " Whosoever shall 



DEVOTIONAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 3 1 

drink of this water shall thirst again, but whoso- 
ever shall drink of the water that I shall give him 
shall never thirst." 

I do not set my watch by every town clock. In 
one place I find that it is much too slow, and in 
another it is much too fast. I seek to adjust it, as 
far as possible, to a great blazing star that for mil- 
lions of years has been coming around to the sum- 
mer solstice without losing the thousandth part of 
a second. I do not regulate my life by the ideals 
and opinions of those I meet on the street. Amid 
all the confusing norms, the clashing judgments, the 
varying conceptions, and the battling creeds, I know 
not what I should do, if I could not turn at times 
to One who is " the same yesterday, to-day, and 
forever." Columbus said that not one sailor in all 
his fleet could have found a way back across the 
ocean, because not one of them knew how to reckon 
with the stars. Alas for him who must go the way 
of the strongest wind or wave or current! Not 
until we find a higher source of authority than that 
which governs the discreet and politic man who 
drifts with life's currents; not until we do the 
right because God is God and truth is truth and 
that which is immutable and eternal within us re- 
sponds to the everlasting Justice and Love; not 
until we enter into the secret of those radiant prin- 
ciples that shine high above the damp and darken- 
ing mists of life's surface— not until then are we 
truly and permanently spiritual. 



32 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

I once received some blanks from a young man 
connected with the department of sociology in one 
of our leading universities. He was investigating. 
He had taken up the great question, " Why do so 
few men go to church ? " He wanted me to count 
the number of men and the number of women in 
my church. Would I please help in the solution 
of this vexing problem? The request aroused my 
curiosity, and I started on a little sociological inves- 
tigation myself. I went to a symphony concert, 
and in front of me, within the range of my vision, 
I counted one hundred and twenty-nine women and 
twenty-three men. I stood at the entrance to the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, on a 
holiday, counting those who came through the door, 
and the women were to the men as ten to one. I 
went to a lecture in a university extension course. 
It was on one of the famous poets, and was by a 
master of the art of literary criticism. I tried to 
count, but could not do it. I found myself nest- 
ling in a bouquet of bonnets. Then I began to 
arrive at some sociological conclusions. One of 
them was that we could not explain the absence 
of men from the church by confining our attention 
to the church. They are absent from other things. 
They have no taste for music, no love of art, no 
desire for literary culture. Perhaps they are too 
busy. I do not wish to judge them too severely. 
I must hurry on to a second sociological conclu- 
sion. I cannot bring myself to feel that it is a very 



DEVOTIONAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 33 

serious accusation against Browning and Tennyson, 
against Corot and Millet, against Schumann and 
Wagner, because there are vast multitudes of men 
who allow the marvelous productions of these great 
geniuses to be crowded out of their lives by the 
more fascinating subject of the market report on 
cotton or the rise of St. Paul stock. Nor am I 
ready quite yet to conclude that the church is obso- 
lete and prayer a useless exercise, if these things do 
not appeal to men. I must understand why. If it 
arises from a low spiritual condition I would recom- 
mend a general toning up of the soul. 

God has arranged this journey of life in such a 
way that there are hours of bright hope and lofty 
expectation when we stand on some height of faith. 
In those hours we see stretching far away in the 
distance the destiny of life. We see the boundless 
possibilities and unspeakable joys that await the 
development of our immortal powers. This may be 
a rare experience. The life of toil at the base of the 
hill may be the common requirement of our days. It 
may be only occasionally that we rise to the region 
that expands the vision and quickens the pulse. It 
is none the less necessary for all that. " We must 
live," men say. Ah ! yes ; we must live. So must 
our spiritual impulses. So must those heavenly 
dreams, as pure as the beams of the morning star. 
So must those aspirations, as intense and deep as 
the silence of the infinite skies. The awe, the hope, 
the faith, the solemn summons, the vision of purity, 
c 



34 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

the wonder that lifts us off our feet — these must 
live too. If ever the time comes when they cease 
to seem real; when they are brushed aside by our 
hurrying life, as having no justification; when the 
pursuit of other things robs us of our reverence, 
turns the world into a workshop, roofs out the blue 
realm of mystery, and leaves us to labor on with- 
out wonder, without prayer, without one cry of the 
heart for the divine — then, believe me, we will be 
dead, a thousand times dead. The inspiration of 
progress will be gone. The power that has lifted 
man away from the gravitation of the clod will 
leave him. He will sink back into primeval 
bestiality. 

" And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on 
the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven ; and 
behold the angels of God ascending and descending 
on it." How beautiful, in the old story, is this pic- 
ture of promise and hope! Even amid the thorn- 
brakes and stony ledges of the wilderness of Luz, 
he found a stairway that led him nearer to God. 
Our dream may be different, but life will be noble 
and sublime just in proportion to our fidelity to it. 
Be true, I beseech you, to those seasons when the 
loftiest emotions of our nature — the reverence for 
right, the yearning for truth, the veneration for ex- 
cellence, the passion for perfection — reach down 
their lofty ladders into the parched desert of life. No 
power but prayer, but the upward-lifting vision, but 
the holy hour that is shielded from the intrusion 



DEVOTIONAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 35 

of sensuous suggestion, can break the shackles and 
chains that bind us to our Promethean rock. This 
is the one thing that is permanent amid all the shift- 
ing forces and changing scenes of life. 

Shy yearnings of the savage 

Unfolding thought by thought, 
To holy lives are lifted, 

To visions fair are wrought; 
The races rise and cluster, 

And evils fade and fall, 
Till chaos blooms to beauty, 

God's purpose crowning all ! 



Ill 



THE INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF 
SPIRITUALITY 



" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind/' 
-Mark 12:30. 

" Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." 
-Isa. 1 : 18. 



" There are Christians all about us who fear to bring 
their minds to bear upon their religion lest their hearts 
should lose their hold upon it. Surely there is something 
terrible in that. Surely it implies a terrible misgiving 
and distrust about their faith. They fear to think lest 
they should cease to love. But really it ought to be out 
of the heart of their thinking power that their deepest 
love is born." 

— Phillips Brooks, Sermon, " The Mind's Love for God" 



Ill 



NO religious problem has been the subject of 
more discussion than the relation of faith 
to reason. Can we have a rational faith? Ought 
we to accept beliefs that seem to contradict the 
norms of the understanding? Should we ever 
bring pressure to bear on the mind, to compel it 
to receive on authority something that seems unrea- 
sonable in itself? Is it a mark of honor to believe 
the unbelievable? The questions crowd upon us. 
The attempt to answer them reveals the greatest 
possible range of opinion. At one extreme we 
find a wild mysticism, that renounces all reasoning 
processes and puts its trust in ecstasies and dreams. 
At the other extreme we find a bald rationalism, 
that trusts only in the mind and denies every value 
that does not present itself through the understand- 
ing. Either of these attitudes, it seems to me, 
does violence to our nature. We must keep the 
eye of the soul open to the ideal ; but we must not 
lose contact with the real. We must be receptive to 
visions of the possible and the wonderful, but we 
must not become victims of the absurd and the 
contradictory. In a word, we must have a religion 
that is rational, but we must always remember that 

39 



40 



ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 



religion is not the product of reason. Keeping this 
balance in mind, I will try this morning to present 
the claim which the intellect makes on a genuinely 
spiritual life. 

To say that our religion is rational is not to 
affirm that we have no need of revelation. It is 
not to make religion a collection of bloodless propo- 
sitions or philosophical categories. It is merely to 



assert that faith 



agrees with 



experience; that it 



does not contradict itself; that it is not at odds with 
our observations of reality; that we worship a God 
of order. So the Spirit of God within us is ever 
saving to the mind: " Be not fearful! Go on and 
find the truth! Be assured of this, that religion is 
grounded in the very necessities of the universe. 
If man held his peace the rocks would cry out. You 
need not hesitate to pry into the secrets of this 
great habitation of your God. Such an act will not 
result, as some seem to think, in unbelief. The 
more you know, the more sublime and marvelous will 
seem your God. Never look upon the ignorance, 
that dare not face the truth, as your friend. In- 
stead, you will find it a foe. It draws back, trem- 
bling and timorous, lest the very misgivings of 
doubt prove to be the truth itself. What is this 
but unbelief? What is this but to assume that faith 
has no trustworthy basis, no foundation in the ever- 
lasting realities of God? If you really believe that 
a Being who is good and true rules at the heart 



of things, then to know him, to 



think his thoughts 



INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF SriRlTUALITY 41 

after him/ is the highest exercise in which human 
nature can indulge." This is the invitation which 
God's Spirit is ever giving to the mind. It saves the 
spiritual life from cowardice and suicide. 

That was a great word which Giordano Bruno 
spoke to the judges who condemned him to be 
burned at the stake. This knight-errant of modern 
philosophy had accepted the views of Copernicus, 
that widened men's thoughts of the universe. His 
accusers declared that it contradicted Aristotle and 
overthrew the Christian religion. He was con- 
demned to death. He turned on his judges, and 
said : " You pronounce the sentence with greater 
fear than I receive it." Yes, with greater fear! 
After all, the real unbelief is failure to trust the 
truth. The accusers of Bruno dared not meet its 
findings nor face its consequences. They had so 
little confidence in the fact that God and reality are 
one that their distrust amounted to practical athe- 
ism. So the condemned man, by appealing to the 
higher court of a reasonable God, forced them to 
pass sentence on themselves. 

Confidence in the reliability of our mental proc- 
esses lies very near to the foundation of all religion 
and morality. It is simply the assurance that God 
is not a fickle, changeable, lawless Being. There 
have been men whose gods were full of caprice. 
They sent floods, eclipses, pestilences, according to 
their whim. It was impossible to tell what they 
would do next. Their actions were determined 



42 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

by no rule or reason. Under such a belief both 
morality and religion were at a very low ebb. The 
reason is simple enough. Could a man be temperate 
in a world where water was refreshing to-day and 
intoxicating to-morrow? Could a man be indus- 
trious in a place where the sun forgot to rise once 
in a while, or where the land and ocean exchanged 
places every few years? It is our belief in the 
rationality of our God that steadies and elevates 
life. We are sure of the immutability of his holy 
will. We are confident that in all the vast infinitude 
of space there is no escape from his Spirit. So 
the cause of justice, that is driven from the field 
to-day, we do not believe is vanquished forever. 
So the unpopular truth, that is scorned by a blind 
rabble, does not thereby become a falsehood. 

Here we have the source of that wonderful faith 
which we find in the apostles of love and the 
martyrs of righteousness. They could not believe 
that this is a chaotic, haphazard, capricious uni- 
verse in which we live. So they faced the shouts of 
derision and the fagots of persecution. Back of 
this heroic act was the assurance that if a thing 
is right its ultimate triumph is pledged by the 
unbreakable promise of an everlasting holiness. All 
that we admire most in men, moral firmness, spir- 
itual trust, intellectual candor, is involved in the 
unshaken confidence that God is a reasonable being. 
He rules the affairs of earth by unconditional laws 
of justice and wisdom. If he were whimsical in 



INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 43 

his judgment the good would be as likely to go 
astray as the bad. We might do our best, and still 
be thwarted by some bad-tempered fancy. We 
might do our worst and still be rewarded by some 
irrational mood. But it is not so. His Spirit is 
ever the same. We cannot escape his truth, though 
we take the wings of the morning and go to the 
uttermost parts of the sea. To be spiritual a man 
must be rational. 

This is the thesis of the book of Proverbs, 
if that book has any thesis. Did you ever stop to 
think that the Proverbs always make righteousness 
synonymous with wisdom and sin the outgrowth of 
folly? When they refer to a sinner they always 
call him a " fool." I have heard it urged that this 
is not good theology. I cannot see why. The sinner 
may be more than a fool. I have no doubt he is. 
But I am sure he is that. Instead of being a 
shrewd man, instead of manifesting uncommon 
acuteness and penetration, instead of possessing, as 
he often fancies, a knowledge " of life " that is 
wanting in other people, he is in reality the most 
irrational of all beings. He makes the worst kind 
of a bargain. How often does this old book 
warn him to " consider his ways." How often is 
he told of the preserving power of " understand- 
ing." How earnestly is he urged to taste the pleas- 
ures of " knowledge." " Get wisdom, get under- 
standing; forsake her not, and she shall preserve 
thee ; love her, and she shall keep thee." " For wis- 



44 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

dom is better than rubies; and all things that may 
be desired are not to be compared to it." The book 
of Proverbs may have its limitations. It may 
emphasize too strongly the intellectual element of 
spirituality. I believe, however, that it is right 
in its fundamental assumption. To call the sinner 
a fool is simply to declare that in a world where 
the soul has so many enemies it can ill afford to 
become its own. 

We laugh at the bigoted Buddhist monk whom 
the scientist tried to cure of his prejudice against 
eating animal food by showing him the countless 
living things that inhabit a glass of water. He 
looked through the microscope, became furious with 
anger, seized the instrument and shattered it into 
fragments. What did that prove? The facts were 
not altered because the microscope was destroyed. 
It is easy for us, who have no deep and passionate 
religious belief involved in the situation, to ridicule 
such an act. But the truth is that every manifesta- 
tion of prejudice is the exact equivalent of this deed 
of the Buddhist monk. We live in an age that has 
peered into the private chamber of Rameses, has 
dug up the secrets of Sennacherib from the mounds 
of sand, has found sea-shells on the tops of the 
highest Alps, has raked the realm of the atmosphere 
for messengers to carry its thoughts, and has made 
the wave-lengths of the spectroscope tell the speed 
of the stars of Ursa Major. The facts it has un- 
covered have often come into contact with old 



INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 45 

theories. But the spirit of investigation did not 
create the facts. It merely brought them to light. 
Whatever we do, we must not destroy the micro- 
scope. It has been too valuable in times past. We 
must face the facts. 

As we look back over the pages of history, and 
read of all the contemptuous wrongs that have held 
despotic sway over an ignorant and helpless human- 
ity, and try to discover the power that slew them, 
we find that in nearly every case it was nothing but 
a thought, stealing silently from the doors of an 
educational institution to hurl defiance at the mon- 
strous wickedness. John Huss, from his chair in 
the University of Prague ; Martin Luther, from his 
studies of the Psalms in Wittenberg; Roger Bacon, 
from his scientific experiments in Oxford; Dietrich 
Flade, with his warfare against the " witch " super- 
stition in the University of Treves ; Andreas Vesa- 
lius, with his studies of anatomy in the University 
of Louvain — all these, and many more, tell us that 
the first conflict with a giant wrong is between an 
idea and its opposite, between a truth and a false- 
hood, between a reason and a fallacy. 

We must widen our conception of spirituality. 
We call Spurgeon and Moody spiritual men. So 
they were. The question is : Do they represent the 
whole area of spirituality? Was not Agassiz a 
spiritual man when he said that he " had no time 
to make money " ? Was not Herschel a spiritual 
man when he made observations on nights so cold 



46 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

that the ink froze in the bottle? Was not Faraday 
a spiritual man when he let others take his electrical 
machine and get rich out of it, because he was too 
busy with his experiments ? Is there anything more 
indicative of a spiritual bent of the soul than the 
supreme devotion to some great truth or principle, 
whose radiance casts all material things into the 
umbra of an eclipse? 

This brings us to a most important consideration. 
I have heard it charged that too much learning 
damps down the spiritual life to smoke; that linger- 
ing in libraries is dangerous to religious experi- 
ence and tends to doubt; that the want of fervor 
among educated people is the direct result of too 
deep draughts from the deadening cup of knowl- 
edge. Is this true? Just true enough, I am con- 
vinced, to be false. The life of the intellect, to be 
sure, does have a tendency to cool down many 
forms of emotion. But the emotions have no 
monopoly of the spiritual life. Intellectual exer- 
cise is itself a spiritual act. The fact is that those 
who attack the problem of life from the vantage- 
ground of the ideal do sometimes despair of actual 
conditions and withdraw from the struggle for a 
while. Indeed, when men enter on the pursuit of 
truth they often reveal the danger that lurks in a 
little knowledge. It tends to self-sufficiency and 
scorn. But experience teaches that more of it is 
sure to open the doors of the soul to a larger 
earnestness and devotion. 



INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 47 

I have yet to meet the man who ever had a pas- 
sionate longing for God that was stifled by too 
much culture. I have yet to meet the man who 
started out with a real vision of a world redeemed 
from error and wrong, but who finally studied the 
enthusiasm out of his soul. My experience has 
been that education gives men high ideals, together 
with a corresponding impatience with the steps 
necessary to their realization. I listened to a pro- 
fessor of sociology not long ago until there came 
to my mind the words of Festus to Paul, " Much 
learning doth make thee mad." But I never looked 
on one of the world's examples of drowsy non- 
chalance, or sensuous indifference, until I was led 
to say, " Much learning hath made thee dead." No! 
If the undying questions of sin, salvation, and human 
destiny have lost their interest with us, it is for some 
other reason than the greatness of our learning. I 
have seen the brightness of an early faith quenched 
by neglect of self-forgetting service of others. I 
have seen the zeal of a youthful enthusiasm go 
out in ashes of greed and gain. I have seen a soul 
that once saw visions from mountaintops shut up 
in a hut of unthinking dogmatism. Many, many 
people have I seen who might have done noble 
service in the cause of bringing light to realms of 
darkness, but who lost their love in a selfish pur- 
suit of pleasure and multiplied social engagements 
until they had no time for the labors of heaven. 
But not one man have I ever seen whose faith 



48 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

dimmed like the morning star before the rising sun 
of a larger knowledge. I cannot believe that God 
can spare any part of us in the great work of spread- 
ing the message of his truth and his love. He 
can use all our powers. 

This is the claim of the intellect on a genuinely 
spiritual life. It is not all of that life. Wonderful 
is the power of sincerity, even in ignorant people, 
to carry conviction and establish principles. Mighty 
is the strength of an organization, built on mingled 
superstition and truth, to focus the scattered forces 
of righteousness. But there is no power on earth 
greater than that of an enlightened faith that is 
not afraid to appeal to the human reason, and that 
spurns all authority that dare not come out of the 
shadow and vindicate itself in the white light of 
God's truth and justice. 

He who passed the long rows of silent sphinxes 
that led up to the Egyptian temple and then threaded 
his way through all the carved columns and sculp- 
tured splendors of the sacred place was rewarded 
by the sight of a bull or a crocodile or a cat. Shall 
we place Christianity even lower in the scale of 
the world's religions? Shall we present to the 
world an attitude that seems to say : " You must 
not inquire too closely into the grounds of our 
faith, for if ever you succeed in passing its thresh- 
old and in working your way through its dim cor- 
ridors and lofty halls until you come to its hply of 
holies, you will there be greeted by the mockery 



INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 49 

of doubt, you will hear only the suppressed sneer 
of unbelief"? How far away is such an attitude 
from the glad invitation that ushered Christianity 
into the world, as we hear it by old Galilee, saying 
to those who question, " Come and see." 

" Ask ! Seek ! Knock ! " cried Jesus. On every 
page we find it. We are children of the light. Our 
God clothes himself with light. Our Christ is the 
Light of the world, the Sun of righteousness. Chris- 
tianity is no esoteric mystery. It calls upon us to 
use the loftiest powers of the understanding. With- 
out the mind we cannot tell false from true. With- 
out the mind we cannot discern that higher end 
which is never to be judged solely by standards of 
emotion and ease, but by whether it is reasonable 
and right. Out of the night of superstition and 
savagery the human race has gone marching on into 
the light, and every step of the way has been 
marked by the broken chains and shackles flung off 
by the mind. As the kingdom of God grows and 
expands there arises an ever-increasing demand for 
thoughtful men and women who are ruled by the 
conviction that the great Father desires that his 
children render to him " a reasonable service." 
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
mind." 

Speak thou the truth. Let others fence 

And trim their words for pay; 
In pleasant sunshine of pretense 
Let others bask their day. 
D 



50 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

Guard thou the fact; though clouds of night 
Down on thy watch-tower stoop; 

Though thou shouldst see thine heart's delight 
Borne from thee by their swoop. 

Face thou the wind; though safer seem 

In shelter to abide; 
We were not made to sit and dream ; 

The safe must first be tried. 



IV 



THE MORAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 



"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
strength."— Mark 12 : 30. 

" Ye shall know them by their f ruits."— Matt. 7 : 16. 



"There are hours, and they come to us all at some 
period of life or other, when the hand of mystery seems 
to lie heavy on the soul; when some life-shock scatters 
existence, leaves it a blank and dreary waste henceforth 
forever, and there appears nothing of hope in all the 
expanse which stretches out, except that merciful gate of 
death which opens at the end — hours when the sense of 
misplaced or ill-requited affection, the feeling of personal 
worthlessness, the uncertainty and meanness of all human 
aims, and a doubt of all human goodness, unfix the soul 
from all its old moorings — and leave it drifting — drifting 
over the vast Infinitude, with an awful sense of solitari- 
ness. Then the man whose faith rested on outward 
Authority and not on inward life, will find it give way : the 
authority of the priest; the authority of the church; or 
merely the authority of a document proved by miracles 
and backed by prophecy ; the soul-conscious life hereafter — 
God — will be an awful desolate Perhaps. Well, in such 
moments you doubt all — whether Christianity be true; 
whether Christ was man, or God, or a beautiful fable. You 
ask bitterly, like Pontius Pilate, What is Truth? In such 
an hour, what remains? I reply, Obedience. Leave those 
thoughts for the present. Act, be merciful and gentle, 
honest; force yourself to abound in little services; try 
to do good to others; be true to the duty that you know. 
That must be right, whatever else is uncertain. And by 
all the laws of the human heart, by the word of God, 
you shall not be left in doubt Do that much of the 
will of God which is plain to you, and ' You shall know of 
the doctrine, whether it be of God.' " 

— F. W. Robertson, Sermon, " Obedience the Organ of 
Spiritual Knowledge/' 



IV 



WHAT is the relation of religion to morality? 
This question has puzzled the minds of 
philosophers and disturbed the dreams of saints 
ever since man began to speculate and worship. 
Over this question the great champions of the church 
have ranged themselves in angry debate, while their 
eager partisans and hated foes filled the galleries to 
applaud or hiss. Over this question schisms have 
been formed, councils have broken up in anger, 
and nations have gone forth to war. We find it 
disturbing the church away back in the beginning, 
before Christianity was out of the cradle. There 
were some who cried, " Only believe ! " To these 
the writer of the Epistle of James replies that " the 
devils believe and tremble." He flings down this 
challenge to his opponents : " Show me thy faith 
without thy works and I will show thee my faith 
by my works." And yet, despite all the contro- 
versies, despite all the racks and thumbscrews, 
despite all the solemn ecclesiastical decrees that 
have sought to regulate religion by establishing 
proper doctrines, the question still keeps coming up. 
Can we separate religion and morality? Is 
humanitarianism a sign of spirituality? Do works 

S3 



54 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

indicate faith? Let us see how Jesus approached 
this matter. He said that we cannot have grapes 
without a vine back of them. He said that wher- 
ever we find figs we may be sure that they did not 
originate from thistles. The connection is vital. 
This solution of the Master has often been a little 
too broad for his followers. They have said, with a 
bit of pharisaical pride and contempt, that certain 
men were " merely moral." Then there has arisen 
a spirit of opposition that has hurled back the 
epithet, " Merely religious ! " Why is not one just 
as true as the other ? 

It is a well-known fact that, in its lowest forms, 
religion is dissociated from ethics. The archeologist 
digging up the remains of an old temple among the 
mounds of Babylonia, happens upon an inscription. 
It promises that those who are faithful in their tem- 
ple sacrifices shall, in the life to come, rest on soft 
couches and drink pure water. Those who have 
neglected their offerings to the temple shall wander 
in a hot, waterless desert. Not a word is said about 
a single moral quality. The life to come does not 
depend upon a man's character, but upon his cere- 
monial faithfulness. Take the five great pillars of 
Mohammedanism. Number one deals with belief 
in the unity of God and the prophetic office of 
Mohammed; number two commands prayer five 
times a day, with exactly defined attitudes; number 
three has to do with the holy tax ; number four out- 
lines the proper fasts; number five institutes the 



MORAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 55 

pilgrimage to Mecca. What have these to do with a 
man's life? with social obligations? with truthful- 
ness, honor, compassion, justice, and love? Yes, it 
is just as possible for a man to be " merely re- 
ligious " as it is to be " merely moral/' 

I grant that the church is often very seriously 
hindered in its work by men of regular habits and 
unimpeachable honesty, whose drowsy souls and 
sluggish imagination present a hard and unimpres- 
sible front to every appeal of inspired sentiment, 
to every radiant truth kindled from the eternal fires. 
But so is the church hindered and held back by 
her own weak-willed and emotional followers, who 
yield a ready response to every high feeling, every 
sacred summons, though their habits are untidy, 
their bills unpaid, their engagements unkept, their 
notes protested, their word untrustworthy, and all 
matters of common righteousness left to the chance 
settlement of a misty and unanticipated future. 
Are these men to be rated higher than the examples 
of moral faithfulness? There is a type of man who 
does not yield readily to the appeals of enthusiasm 
or the fervors of faith. His soul burns with indig- 
nation at a piece of meanness. His word of prom- 
ise is as firm as the eternal hills. He commands 
our admiration for his strength of purpose and his 
incorruptible fidelity. And yet he never seems 
to see any fair vision of truth breaking from the 
dark background of the unknown, and lives and 
dies as if he had never heard of One whom love 



56 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

led up the side of Golgotha. For this we cannot 
excuse him. But, for my part, despite this defect, 
I cannot help regarding him as nearer the kingdom 
than one who seems to grasp the lofty themes of 
the gospel, but who never wins from his fellow men 
that silent trust, that steady confidence, that quiet 
esteem which is only obtained after long years of 
unbroken honor and unfailing strength. 

The will has its claim on a genuinely spiritual 
life. One of the first products of faith is faithful- 
ness. Vagrant purposes and unfulfilled resolves are 
signs of unbelief. No man has a right to be called 
spiritual who has not trained himself in ways of 
honor, nerved himself to resist wrong, disciplined 
his powers in obedience to virtue, and climbed 
steadily up the scale of moral purpose and purity. 
Valuable as the visions are, they are merely the 
guides and charts of a toilsome and trustworthy 
career. 

We are told that Henry II of France decided 
one day to become a monk. With this object in 
view he went to see a certain holy friar, to whose 
care and guidance he intended to resign his spiritual 
life. Said the friar: "Wilt thou promise me im- 
plicit obedience if i take the direction of thy con- 
science?" "I will," replied the king. "Then/' 
said the holy man, "go back to thy kingdom and 
rule." Here was a holy man who saw the largeness 
of the spiritual life. He realized that in the right- 
eous ruling of France there was an opportunity 



MORAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 57 

to be religious. Faith is seen just as truly in royal 
service as in devout contemplation. Every high 
ideal, every glorious principle, every transfiguring 
truth cries out to us, " Go back to thy kingdom and 
rule." Take your faith with you into the common 
scenes of life. If you believe in God, that fact 
ought to help solve industrial problems, purify the 
political atmosphere, elevate the standards of the 
street, and cast the radiance of its belief on all the 
tender humanities and vexing situations that enter 
into your daily existence. Spirituality is not a 
mystical rhapsody. 

A great moral revival seems to be sweeping 
over the civilized world. It is not like the old 
emotional revival. It hears the cry of oppressed 
childhood and hastens to its aid. It rises in indigna- 
tion against the corrupt granting of municipal con- 
tracts. It calls attention to the sacrifice of life and 
limb by the absence of safety devices on machinery. 
It fights battles for the conservation of our natural 
resources. It mitigates the hardships of the shop* 
girl by appeals to consumer and employer. In a 
thousand ways it enters the factory, knocks at the 
halls of government, insists on being heard in the 
room of the Board of directors. The ideals and 
principles of Christianity, it assures us, must be 
carried into the problems of our modern life. Many 
are asking, " What part is the church playing in 
this new crusade?" Various are the answers. 
There are some who declare that she is doing valiant 



58 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

service, because in the hour of devotion and prayer 
she is furnishing men with the incentive, the re- 
solve, the vision of righteousness that eventuates 
in social reform. There are some who denounce 
and repudiate her entirely, because her ministers 
are not laying aside their cassocks and their long 
black coats to go out into the dust and strain of 
the conflict. Whatever method she may pursue, 
one thing is evident. She must face the problems 
of her age or go down. At her door stands her 
Master with the old warning: "Beware lest the 
kingdom be taken from you and given to those 
who bring forth the fruits thereof." 

This suggests the relation which morality bears 
to spirituality. Morality is spirituality at work. 
It is the exercise of spirituality. Suppose a man 
were to say to me : " Do you believe that physical 
vitality is the result of exercise, or that exercise is 
dependent upon physical vitality?" I should an- 
swer, " Both ! " You cannot separate the two. You 
cannot have activity without strength, and strength 
is greatly augmented by activity. Take the case of 
a small boy. Let him linger about the house for a 
few days, lolling on sofa-cushions, looking at pic- 
tures, dangling his legs from the edge of a chair, 
and what will be the result? He will be pale, life- 
less, anemic. And yet his exercise is not some- 
thing that he enters into in order to avoid this re- 
sult. When he runs and jumps and shouts he 
develops leg and lung, but that is not the object of 



MORAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 59 

his activities. The object is something that com- 
mands his enthusiasm, fires his blood, stirs his soul. 
Let us apply our parable to the relation of faith 
to works. A great deal has been said on this point 
that has assumed that we could " put asunder " 
what God has " joined together." Suppose a man 
were to say to me, " Do you believe that we are 
saved by faith or by works ? " I should answer, 
" Both ! " The question seems to me to be about 
as important as this one : " Do you believe in the 
positive or the negative end of the electric battery, 
in the anode or the cathode ? " The implied separa- 
tion is an impossibility. To be sure, a genuinely 
spiritual man will not make the salvation of his 
own soul the object of his religious activities. In 
that sense his " works " will have an entirely sec- 
ondary consideration. They will be like the exercise 
that develops the muscles of the boy. His object 
will be some great dream of faith, some eternal 
purpose caught from the plan of God. The cry of 
a world of need, the idea of a divine kingdom, the 
illumination of lands of darkness, the correction 
of social evils, the plea of poverty or grief or igno- 
rance, or some other great project of faith, will 
command his energies and arouse his hope. This 
hope will turn instinctively toward the world. He 
will not stop to question why, or enter into labored 
speculations, or try to find the result or reason of 
his spiritual exercise. He will work because he 
believes. 



60 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

There may be a little too much self-confidence 
in the cry of the ancient writer, " I will show thee 
my faith by my works/' We do not like that atti- 
tude. When a man talks like that we begin to fear 
that he has lost the sublime unconsciousness • that 
always characterizes genuine faith. Such a faith 
is more likely to exclaim, " When saw we thee an 
hungered and fed thee?" Nevertheless, there is 
no other way in which a man can show his faith 
to the world, save by his works. When he ceases 
his activities he loses his faith. There are many 
to whom this has happened. They have settled 
down to a pale, indolent, exsanguined state of pious 
satisfaction that is content with sitting in a 
cushioned pew and is afraid to venture into the 
rough paths of life. Their religion is purely cere- 
monial. It is flushed by no eagerness, quickened by 
no hope. They have robbed it of the red blood of 
sincerity and lowered its vitality to the point of 
death. They have done worse. They have with- 
held from the world that conquering and transform- 
ing influence which constitutes the very mission and 
object of religion. In the battles and toils of right- 
eousness, amid the perplexities and problems of so- 
ciety, out where the forces of this present and press- 
ing world are working toward darkness and light, 
is the place where religion finds itself. It does not 
reach its final and true meaning in the pale prayers 
that are forgotten the moment we turn our back on 
the altar. The strife for honesty, the loyalty to 



MORAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 6l 

truth, the indignation at wrong, the act of for- 
giveness, the passion for justice, and a hundred 
other qualities and deeds that are only furnished 
by the sudden emergencies and hard situations of 
the teeming world are the test and vindication of 
faith. 

So morality is the practice of spirituality. Like all 
of the higher arts, it is subject to the widest possible 
range of explanation. Is musical ability the gift of 
genius? or is it the result of practice? How much 
fruitless discussion there has been over this ques- 
tion. Take the music of Handel. Shall we at- 
tribute it to the spontaneous outburst of genius, 
the unstudied flow of symphonies of song that 
echoed through the great soul of the composer? or 
shall we say that it was the product primarily of 
that old harpsichord which he is said to have hidden 
in the attic when a boy, and whose keys he hollowed 
out by practice until they resembled the bowls of 
spoons? That question might be argued endlessly. 
That an element of inspiration enters into musical 
composition no one can deny. Around this fact 
cluster all the romantic admirations and mystical 
dreams of the music-lover. And yet no one knows 
as well as does the skilled musician what a toll of 
toil and drudgery has to be paid for musical attain- 
ment. It is genius plus industry. It is inspiration 
manifesting itself in energy and persistence. It is 
a divine gift that never comes to expression without 
hard performance and resolute work. 



62 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

Perhaps this will throw light on a certain injunc- 
tion of the Scriptures: " Work out your own salva- 
tion, for it is God that worketh in you." The old 
preachers who declared that "morality is not 
enough " were simply emphasizing the divine ele- 
ment that enters into all spiritual attainment. At 
times this emphasis became so strong that it en- 
couraged an indolent ecclesiasticism that sang 
" Hallelujah, 'tis done! " and turned the world over 
to Satan. That salvation is the " gift " of God I 
would not deny. And yet I sometimes feel that too 
strong an emphasis on this fact is responsible for 
the feeble, sporadic, drowsy efforts which the aver- 
age Christian puts forth toward the realization of 
a kingdom of social righteousness. Salvation is 
the gift of God; but it is only given to him who 
practises. It is bestowed on the man who seeks 
purity industriously, who labors long at justice, who 
searches for honor with a zeal that never flags in 
the quest, and who cannot rest until the truth of 
God shall triumph and love be established every- 
where. " This commandment have we from him, 
That he who loveth God love his brother also." 

This is the claim of morality on a life that is 
truly spiritual. It is just the demand for a de- 
veloped will. If Jesus taught anything, he taught 
men to put their hands to the plow, to be found 
working in the vineyard, to bear burdens, to min- 
ister to needs, to seek truth, to deal righteously, 
and to finish the divine structure whose foundation 



MORAL ELEMENT OF SPIRITUALITY 63 

they laid in faith. He never advocated indolent 
piety or nerveless quietism. He recognized always 
the part which God plays in our destiny, and w T as 
ready to cry, even in anguish, " Thy will be done ! " 
But he also recognized that no man can be pleasing 
to God unless his own will is resolute in the search 
for honor and right. Whatever heavenly talent may 
be the inception and incentive of religion, Jesus 
clearly taught that its retention must be won by a 
career of moral fidelity that adds " other five 
talents." The act of tenderness, the response to 
duty, the deed of heroic honor, the gentle ministra- 
tion of love, the service of incorruptible righteous- 
ness will alone secure the permanence of that which 
we call salvation. Indeed, they are vitally connected 
with it. " Do men gather grapes of thorns?" The 
grapes explain the vine. They crown its being. 
They give it its value. So do morals explain re- 
ligion. They are the object for which it exists. It 
was meant to purify life, to revise our activities, 
to bring new standards into our dealings one with 
another, and to cool the hot fires of selfish ambitions 
by thoughts of our eternal destiny. If it does not 
do this it is false religion. If it does do this, how- 
ever we may differ with its methods and theories, 
we are compelled to recognize its truth. In the 
labor of faithfulness, in the perseverance that knows 
no end, in the resolve that nothing can weary and 
the patience that nothing can daunt, we are to seek 
the signs of God's presence. So, at last, shall be 



64 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

brought together from the East and West that great 
company of 

Simple lives, complete and without flaw, 
Who said not to their Lord, as if afraid, 
" Here is thy talent in a napkin laid," 
But labored in their sphere, as those who live 
In the delight that work alone can give. 



A COMPLETE SPIRITUALITY 



"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all 
thy strength." — Mark 12 : 30. 

"These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the 
other undone."— -Matt. 23:23. 



" For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill, 
And break the shore, and evermore 
Make and break, and work their will; 
Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll 
Round us, each with different powers, 
And other forms of life than ours, 
What know we greater than the soul ? " 

— Tennyson, " Ode on the Death of the Duke of Well- 
ington." 



V 



I HAVE endeavored to show in this series of 
sermons that the spiritual life has different ele- 
ments or phases. On one side it is affectional; on 
another, devotional; on a third, intellectual; and 
on a fourth, moral. It is related to love; it is re- 
lated to worship; it is related to truth; it is related 
to righteousness. In this final sermon I shall try to 
show how these elements are related to each other 
and maintain a sort of reciprocity in our religious 
life. Like petals on a flower, they hold each other 
in place. 

Not that I would deny the possibility of a one- 
sided spirituality. A man can be spiritual if he 
is over-developed on the side of the intellect and 
under-developed on the side of the affections, but he 
cannot be completely spiritual. A man can be 
spiritual if his soul is swept by gales of high emo- 
tion in times of religious excitement, and after the 
" season " is over is becalmed in indifference, but 
his spiritual condition is far from being ideal. A 
man can be spiritual who is so engrossed in the 
mechanism of moral activities that all sublime 
thoughts and visions of faith are crowded out of 
his life, but his spiritual nature will be stunted, 

6 7 



68 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

impoverished, in constant danger of death. The guid- 
ing principle in all these matters is : " These ought 
ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone." 

I might compare these elements to windows look- 
ing out toward the four compass-points of life. 
Windows are useful, but they are not always kept 
open and clean. They lose their transparency and 
are subject to devices like drawn shades and " bat- 
ten-blinds." When the patriots of Italy erected a 
statue to Giordano Bruno in the Piazza Campo di 
Fiore in Rome, on the spot where he had been burned 
at the stake, the pope sent for masons and had all 
the windows of the Vatican that look out on that 
old square completely sealed up. That is one way 
of getting rid of uncomfortable thoughts and mem- 
ories. We all use the device more or less. We 
brick over the windows of the spirit. We make 
certain parts of our nature dense and dark. We 
shut out the splendors and glories that seek to enter 
from directions of the unknown and untried. 

In our text we find Christ accusing the Pharisees 
of manifesting great zeal on the side of ceremonial 
purity and legal righteousness, though in matters 
of mercy and affection their souls were closed. The 
Catholic Church of the fifteenth century made much 
of devotion. It worshiped in marvels of Gothic 
beauty, with carved stalls and mosaic pavements 
and chapels adorned by the art of Raphael and 
Bramante and Fra Angelico. But it was not open 
to the light of the new learning that came with 



A COMPLETE SPIRITUALITY 69 

the Renaissance, and it allowed gross immoralities 
to creep into high places. Then came Luther. 
Freedom cried with his lips. The demand of com- 
mon righteousness made itself heard. A new day 
dawned for the mind. But Protestantism is still an 
experiment. Intellectual freedom tends to a brash 
agnosticism. Men who toil for the moral uplift of 
society denounce the church while drawing on it 
for substance and support. The great Catholic 
Church still stands, telling us that wherever Prot- 
estantism goes prayer dies out and faith is lost in 
the disputes of a false freedom. The fact is that 
in seeking to develop on one side of our spiritual 
nature we forget another. 

How hard it is to keep the balance. I have been 
greatly interested in watching the effect of sermons 
in this series on members of the congregation. 
There have been people who were delighted with a 
sermon which they should not have heard at all. 
I could have wished them out of town that day. A 
little later, when the next sermon in the series was 
preached, they were slightly bored. That was pre- 
cisely the sermon to which they should have given 
their entire thought and attention. Suppose you 
happen to be mercurial in temperament and easily 
roused on the side of your emotions. You will 
enjoy exhortations to forgiveness and love, but wall 
not respond to praise of moral faithfulness and 
will find little help in descriptions of the spirituality 
involved in intellectual toil. Suppose you are some- 



yo ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

what of a doctrinaire, and are ever on the alert to 
see what the preacher thinks about the Trinity. 
You will find your attention wandering when he 
talks about the ministry of compassion, and you 
may be slightly angered over the thought that a 
great moral revival is taking place outside the 
church. Suppose you are given to devotional 
dreams, and enjoy the uplift of a vision of prayer 
and faith. You will feel that you are being given 
a " stone " instead of " bread " if the preacher ap- 
plies the principles of Christianity to social prob- 
lems, and a description of the great achievements 
of modern investigation will seem to you to have 
nothing to do with " the gospel." Or, finally, sup- 
pose you are an unimpressible moralist, and judge 
everything by its practical and ethical results. You 
will likely be disgusted by ringing appeals to loyalty, 
and an upward look of the soul toward the sunlit 
hills of faith will send you out of the church as 
sarcastic as Carlyle was over the paintings of Alma 
Tadema. 

Right here is the source of some of the deepest 
disappointments in preaching. Men take each 
other's medicine. One has an analytical mind; an- 
other is an unsocial mystic; a third makes idols 
of methods and"" machinery; a fourth is a genial 
person, who longs for the friendly greetings that 
come when the service is over. To persuade these 
types to listen to what they need rather than what 
they want is no easy task. They are quite likely 



A COMPLETE SPIRITUALITY 7 1 

to be studying the decorations on the walls at pre- 
cisely the moment when they ought to be listening 
most attentively. Then too, there is the further dis- 
appointment of finding them absent, or present, 
when they ought not to be. If the message of the 
morning happens to touch on the intellectual ele- 
ment of spirituality, and you speak of the need of 
an adjustment of Christianity to the results of 
modern scientific discovery, you will be quite likely 
to receive the congratulations of certain " liberal " 
men who come to church once in three months 
and are wofully deficient on the side of prayer. 
The next Sunday, when the discourse is on the 
danger of allowing the devotional element to drop 
out of our modern life, these same men will be 
taking a motor trip through the country. However, 
you will receive congratulations. Some man, who 
is able to pray fervently while his notes are going 
to protest, will come up and wring your hand and 
tell you how he was " fed." Another, who can 
quote Scripture glibly while his word is as unre- 
liable as a sand-bar in a strong tide, will thank you 
most heartily and say that he has been " on the 
heights." To be sure all this assumes that the 
preacher himself has a balanced character. I have 
said hard things, perhaps, of people in the congre- 
gation. I have taken it for granted that the dif- 
ferent types of sermons are equally good. Of 
course, they are not. For the benefit of the con- 
gregation I will confess that a man of great dis- 



J2 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

crimination came to me after one of the sermons in 
this series, and said, " You were in your element 
this morning/' 

We lead a many-sided existence. Whatever 
necessities of specialization may arise from the 
demands of our daily ambition, we cannot afford to 
remain undeveloped in essential matters that touch 
the life of the soul. The different virtues, like the 
stones in an arch, hold each other in place. To fail 
in anything essential is to fail in everything. We 
cannot treat our characters as we do our houses in 
winter, turning all the heat from the furnace into 
a single room, while the rest of the house is cold and 
uninhabitable. A man is more than a dining-room, 
or a chamber, or a parlor for social entertainment, 
or even a library for the acquisition of knowledge. 
To shut off splendid possibilities of the soul and 
turn all our enthusiasm into special virtues is to 
endanger everything. The soul is not a piece of 
mechanism,, but a vital existence. Every unde- 
veloped possibility is like the dead limb on a tree. 
It threatens the life that bears it. To be a man 
of affection, or a man of devotion, or a man of 
righteousness, or a man of thought, and to be that 
exclusively, is to endanger our entire spiritual life. 
The fact is that the various elements of spirituality 
depend upon each other and stand or fall together. 

It makes little difference whether a man leaves 
the front door open, or the back door, or the parlor 
window, or the entrance to the cellar. The thief 



A COMPLETE SPIRITUALITY 73 

can come in by any one of these openings. We only 
need to leave ourselves unguarded in some single 
spot. The absence of one quality may result in 
the loss of all. This is supremely true of an organ- 
ization that aims to be comprehensive and helpful 
and universal. How strange it is that there have 
been people ready to argue such questions as these : 
" Does the church stand for love, or does the 
church stand for righteousness? Is religion a mat- 
ter of worship, or is it a matter of truth? Ought 
we to seek to convert men, or to educate them? 
Should we endeavor to win them by making our 
services attractive, or should we make ringing ap- 
peals to their conscience ? In short, is God truth ? or 
is God love? or is God justice? or is God purity? " 
What answer shall we make ? " God is all." 

There is an old story of a man in Athens who 
came to the market-place one day with a brick in 
his hand. When he was asked why he was carrying 
the brick, he replied that he had a house to sell 
and brought this along as evidence. It is not re- 
corded that he made the sale. Somehow, in the 
minds of his fellow citizens, there lurked a sus- 
picion that the house existed only in his imagina- 
tion or in his intentions. The evidence was not 
strong enough to convince. It takes more than one 
quality of character to make a genuinely spiritual 
man. If a man is spiritual because he believes in 
the atonement, then a man is spiritual because he 
gives a coin to a tramp. If a man deserves to be 



74 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

called religious because he has certain devout feel- 
ings, then a man deserves to be called religious be- 
cause he has written an accurate article on the 
habits of the Limulus crab. One brick is as good 
as another when it comes to evidence for the exist- 
ence of the house. 

I believe the time is coming when we shall no 
longer cling to the strange superstition that certain 
parts of life belong to religion, and certain other 
parts belong to the world; that a certain class of 
actions are to be regarded as distinctively sacred 
and a certain other class must be looked upon as 
merely secular, and that life can be disjointed, dis- 
membered, cut along its medial line in such a way 
that men can say, " Whatsoever falls on this side I 
must give to God, but whatsoever falls over here 
I can have for myself." I believe that the time is 
coming when we see that God must be crowned king 
over the whole realm of life ; when we see that a man 
cannot be spiritual without involving his whole na- 
ture in a grand movement upward ; when the effort 
to fence off faith in some little corner, and withhold 
from the service of God many of the loftiest powers 
of the mind and heart, is banished into the limbo 
of old superstitions ; and when there rings out over 
life the first of all the commandments: " Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with 
all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy 
strength." " There is none other commandment 
greater than this." 



A COMPLETE SPIRITUALITY 75 

To sink a ship you need have but one defective 
plank. Life is a totality. The spirit of man has 
many elements, but only one existence. It has been 
my effort in this series of sermons to show that 
spirituality is not a separate entity that can be de- 
veloped independently of other things in life. It is 
a grand and comprehensive thing. It is a unifying 
inspiration that drags all life upward. It is an inter- 
penetrating of every corner of our existence by the 
all-conquering Spirit of God. I have endeavored to 
be fair and impartial in treating the various phases 
of life, but I have resisted every tendency to make 
them supreme or absorbing. It is a great thing to 
be affectionate and spontaneous and sympathetic, 
but the emotions have no right to demand that all 
the rest of our nature be mere fuel to feed their 
fires, burnt-offerings for the altars of an insatiable 
heart. It is a great thing to be rational and thought- 
ful and inquisitive, but the mind has no right to 
play the Moloch, crushing the affections, paralyzing 
the will, and tearing to pieces our very prayers by 
the fingers of analysis. It is a great thing to be 
devout and prayerful and mystical, but when the 
ecstatic spirit begins to drain off into itself the more 
heroic and active energies of the soul, it becomes 
stagnant, and turns life into a Dead Sea. It is a 
great thing to be moral and honest and upright, but 
the man who cramps his soul within the narrow 
sphere of the maxims of a " Poor Richard's Al- 
manac " will become at last a spiritual dwarf. We 



?6 ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALITY 

must seek to develop all the elements of our spir- 
itual nature, never breaking their divinely ordained 
democracy in order to create a despotism. 

I believe that this can be done. Indeed, I believe 
that it has been done. With this word of encourage- 
ment I bring the series to a close. Once, in the his- 
tory of our humanity, there was a rounded and com- 
pleted Character. One man there was whose man- 
hood was symmetrical and harmonious. He was 
no cold intellectualist ; no rigid moralist ; no dream- 
ing mystic; no shallow emotionalist. His life was 
poised and balanced. Its proportions were arranged 
according to the purposes of God. He finished the 
work that was given him to do. He sympathized 
with human infirmities, was resolute in the hour of 
trial, poured out his soul to the Father, and was the 
incarnation of truth. With all his heart, and with 
all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his 
strength he lived the divine life. So truly did he 
live it that the dream of the apostle is slowly becom- 
ing the goal of the ages and, with ever-increasing 
loyalty, the world is coming " in the unity of faith, 
and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full- 
grown manhood, unto the measure of the stature 
of the fulness of Christ." 

He who with bold and skilful hand sweeps o'er 
The organ keys of some cathedral pile, 
Flooding with music vault and nave and aisle, 
While on his ear falls but a thunderous roar- 
In the composer's lofty motive free, 



A COMPLETE SPIRITUALITY JJ 

Knows well that all that temple vast and dim, 

Thrills to its base with anthem, psalm, or hymn, 

True to the changeless laws of harmony. 

So he who on these clanging chords of life, 

With firm, sweet touch plays the great Master's score, 

Of truth and love and duty evermore, 

Knows too, that far beyond this roar and strife, 

Though he may never hear, in the true time, 

These notes must all accord in symphonies sublime. 



DEC 28 



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